A University Named For Confederate, Black Students Demand Equality

Blink twice if you’re not surprised that a university named after the commander of the Confederate army in the state of Virginia is not necessarily bending over backwards to welcome black students.

Nevertheless, a group of these students attending Washington and Lee University is urging administrators to change up their Confederate heritage and the “dishonorable conduct” of namesake Robert E. Lee to reflect a better environment for minority students.

Washington and Lee University is located in Lexington, Va., and black students make up about 3.5 percent of the total student population.

According to The Washington Post, third-year law student Dominik Taylor, a descendent of slaves on his father’s side, said he felt betrayed by admissions representatives who touted the school’s diversity.

“They assured me it was a welcoming environment where everyone sticks together as a community,” Taylor said. “Then I came here and felt ostracized and alienated.”

Taylor, along with a group of students, have urged the board of trustees to make the university more welcoming for minority students. Known collectively as the Committee, the students wrote a letter to the trustees with a list of “demands,” and promise acts of civil disobedience if they see no action before Sept. 1.

The list of demands include the removal of Confederate flags from the chapel; and they want administrators to ban Confederate re-enactors and sympathizers from campus on the Lee-Jackson holiday in Virginia.

They also ask that the university’s undergraduate school cancel classes on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

The Washington and Lee law school began observing the King holiday in 2013, but the undergraduate students still attend classes. Although Lee-Jackson Day, the Friday before the King holiday, is not a formal holiday on campus, the school does honor Lee annually around his birthday on Founder’s Day.

University president, Kenneth Ruscio, responded via an open letter to the students’ requests, stating that he has asked a “special task force” to study the history of African-Americans at the school.

“While we are aware of some of that history, I believe we should have a thorough, candid examination,” Ruscio wrote.

Many feel that the students should have known before hand that the university’s history was shrouded in racism, before applying to attend.

5 thoughts on “A University Named For Confederate, Black Students Demand Equality”

university’s history was shrouded in racism – what is this supposed to mean anyway? We are Confederate Southern Americans and proud of it. Out ancestors founded this USA wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; without them and General Lee you would have no school to go to. Sorry, but I don’t like you at all and I know from experience that you do not and never have wanted to integrate. You just want to have and destroy what we built and what we have. You don’t just want like what we have but what we have~!

It could be conveniently located.
It’s there right.
I would have personally driven right past their little exist school, but if everyone took that stance how would America be different? (Besides racist being open to your face.)